


Well Met by Hail and Shakespeare

by meyari



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 02:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2451392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyari/pseuds/meyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>AU Prompt:</em> both in a tiny cafe/bookstore waiting out the storm</p>
            </blockquote>





	Well Met by Hail and Shakespeare

**Author's Note:**

> I felt the need to write a snippet of JayTim so here you go. A completely random AU where the boys meet in the tiniest bookstore ever that I desperately wish was real. :D

"We're going to flood."

Tim stared out the tiny window, doing his level best to ignore the warm bulk of the man crowded into the corner with him. The bookstore was quiet, just the two of them and old Mr. Sison behind the counter, but it was also unbearably tiny. Or at least it felt tiny with two people shopping in it. Or maybe it was that Tim was crowded in with the other man who was almost literally as wide at the shoulders as the bookshelf behind him.

He smelled like cocoa and beef on rye. Unlike Tim, thin enough that people tended to believe that he was fragile instead of simply skinny, the other man was wide and beefy with the sort of muscles that came from, Tim didn't know. Wrestling with bears? He looked like the sort to wrestle bears for sport. Probably he'd come into Mr. Sison's shop looking for a new book on bears or something.

"Mmm, nah," the other man said after craning his neck to peer at the water pooling on the sidewalk outside. "Should be okay. It keeps raining like that and all bets are off though. I think the drain is clogged up the street. Jason."

"Hah?"

Jason grinned at him, nose wrinkling as if Tim staring at him with his mouth open was cute. Attractive. Appealing somehow. In the back of the five by ten shop Mr. Sison chuckled, looking over his reading glasses at Tim with enough amusement that Tim managed to snap his mouth shut.

"My name," Jason said. "It's Jason. Jason Todd."

"Ah, Tim." Tim blinked at him, pondered climbing over the huge heavy trestle table in the middle of the room with its chin-high stacks of books before deciding that he wasn't going to run away from a simple conversation. "Drake."

All three of them turned back to the door as the rain shifted to hail that hammered on the tiny awing over the door. Hail battered the window like a million tiny bb pellets. Seconds ticked by and the hail grew and grew until Mr. Sison stood and waved them back into the heart of the shop.

Jason pushed Tim first or at least he tried. He blinked and then deliberately, obnoxiously, squeezed Tim's bicep while grinning at the muscle he felt there. Tim glowered at him only to jump when the hail grew until it was golf ball sized.

"Ah, maybe we should close the blinds?" Tim suggested.

"Yes," Mr. Sison agreed. "Must check the back, boys. Get the blinds, please."

Tim slipped past Jason, edged around the end of the table that barely gave one room to open the door between the boxes of books on either side of the door and then hurriedly lowered the blinds in the vain hope that broken glass wouldn't come flying into the shop. The hail continued to grow, as did the rain pouring down over them.

"This can't last," Jason complained, worried, fussed, as he lowered the blind on his window and then the door as well.

"I hope it doesn't," Tim agreed. "I'm just glad I got here before the rain really started falling. Though I'm not sure my books are going to survive the trip back to the subway station."

"No kidding," Jason said.

He leaned on top of the precarious piles of books on the table, sighing as he picked up one, studied the back, set it down. The second met with a frown and a snort. Ann Coulter, Tim noted. An old, old leather bound copy of Shakespeare made him smile so gently that Tim's earlier guesses of bear-wrestling morphed into kindergarten teacher with twenty cats. Or maybe pit bulls, rescued ones.

"You like Shakespeare?" Tim asked.

"Hell yeah," Jason said, smiling at the book, not Tim. It felt like a loss. "Got this edition already otherwise I'd pick it up, add it to my tab."

"What's your favorite?" Tim asked, edging closer, carefully skirting a leaning tower of cookbooks older than his mother stacked from the floor to the curve of his ass in exactly the right place to make movement into the shop harder.

"That's like asking what my favorite child is," Jason complained. "Come on, how's a guy supposed to choose? Favorite tragedy? Comedy? Sonnet? Give me a hand."

"Tragedy?" Tim asked while laughing. Maybe he was an actor? Jason certainly had the features for it though the streaks of white in his hair would require dye or a wig to cover them.

Jason finally looked up from the book, eyes twinkling with excitement. He pursed his lips and then ducked his head before grinning at Tim with those laughing eyes sparkling through lashes long enough to grace any debutant's face.

"Hence! home, you idle creatures get you home:" Jason intoned with all the proper dramaticality of a Shakespearean actor, "Is this a holiday? what! know you not,  
Being mechanical, you ought not walk / Upon a labouring day without the sign / Of your profession? / Speak, what trade art thou?"

Tim laughed and nodded. "Julius Caesar. Interesting. I would have expected Macbeth. How about comedies?"

"Aaagh!" Jason complained. "I can never choose between Twelfth Night or A Midsummer's Night's Dream."

He set the book aside, leaning on the stacks despite the way they wobbled and shifted. It put his face so close to Tim's that he could feel the heat of Jason's breath, the moisture and faint scent of mustard. Tim licked his lips and stared into Jason's eyes despite the heat rising on his cheeks.

"The hail stopped," Jason murmured, one hand drifting up to rest against Tim's cheek. "Want to go get some coffee, talk about Shakespeare?"

Tim thought about turning to look. Jason's eyes were very, very blue, with flecks of gold around the iris. He had a scar on his bottom lip that looked decades old, and the faint scar left behind after a pierced ear healed up on his left ear lobe. Doubt made tiny anxious wrinkles appear at the corners of Jason's eyes. That was when Tim realized that a reply might possibly be a good idea.

"Ah, yes?" Tim said, swallowing hard and squaring his shoulders the way Mother always insisted bred confidence. "I mean, yes. I'd like that. A lot."

The wrinkles shifted into broad smile wrinkles that squinched up Jason's entire face. His teeth were nearly perfect other than one canine that grew at an angle on the right side of his mouth. Tim swallowed hard, took a deep breath and then pointed at the register.

"I've got my books already," Tim suggested.

"I'll come back later," Jason agreed so readily that Tim's blush swept down his neck and across his ears. "Come on. Let's run before the next rainstorm hits."

Jason slid to the door as though the books were water and he was a fish. Tim followed, nearly toppling the cookbooks, the stack of romance novels with battered covers on the corner of the table and the tiny stack of Beatrice Potter books by the window. He gladly slipped out the door, clutching his book bag to his chest against the drizzle that started to soak his hoodie.

"Ready?" Jason asked. 

He offered a hand to Tim, grinning so maniacally that Tim knew, knew, that he'd be dragged running and laughing through the rain to the subway station. Tim took Jason's hand and grinned back so widely that he probably looked demented.

"Let's go!"

The End


End file.
